Bentleyville 2017...

The culmination of the trip to Duluth last week was a stop at Bentleyville...

Holiday lights, Santa and Mrs. Claus...Luke and Lex wanted in...

The first stop was the big guy...Santa...and if you see him you receive a knitted hat for free...

After that picture, I jumped in quick...

Then we back-tracked to Mrs. Claus (she talked a whole lot more than the big guy....).

Lukie's favorite part of the exhibit is Dino Land...Dinosaurs by holiday lights...he loves it...

Of course there's a MN angle...Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox?...

And you have to show off Canal Parks most identifiable feature...the Aerial Bridge...

All-in-all, it's a huge amount of lights and a lot of fun to visit...

Darn right that Bentleyville Rocks!!!

Kindness...

I picked Lukie and Lex up at school yesterday after their Spanish class and Lex was pretty excited to show me this...

She is pretty kind...except towards Lukie who she likes to pinch and scratch...

Duluth...

Luke/Lex and I took took off Saturday morning and headed for Duluth for the day.  We love that town and Canal Park is always fun.  Lukie had been saying how he wanted to visit the Maritime Museum for a while, so we spent a couple of hours walking around in taking in the exhibits...

Coming down the hill into Duluth, we saw a 'Laker' coming into harbor and made it just in time to see it come in...

And who doesn't like to see the Aerial bridge rising or lowering...

Just the bridge is cool...

Forty minutes later, a 'Saltie' was leaving the harbor to anchor in the lake for a day or two...

While all of that was happening, another ship was coming in to anchor overnight before it loaded in Two Harbors...busy day in Duluth...we had to get a selfie with two ships at anchor...

What do you do with a huge lake and a unlimited supply of rocks available?  You skip them for an hour or two of course...

Later we saw something I had never seen, a tug bringing in several barges to the harbor...

Here's a better view of the two ships at anchor in the lake...

What was cool and strange to see was how the boardwalk fared with a late October storm.  View the video here as it was happening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpcjqnL3y30)...

It was destroyed and a huge amount of rock was thrown up onto the area surrounding the hotels...

I would love to see the lake angry like that...

It was a great morning/afternoon in Duluth...

First Hockey Game...

Luke and Lex attended their first hockey game tonight.  And both of them asked when the next game was (apparently we spend a lot of time at HS sports)....

I have a former student (she's a freshman) who asked me multiple times last year if I could come to her game, but the schedules just didn't work (football playoffs, Kieran's basketball practices, Raider basketball games).  I had told her that I definitely would watch a game this year and she replied "not one game, but five."  The challenge was issued...

I've been to three of four games this year and will definitely reach the five I've told I need to see (it's going to slow down as the Raider Basketball team starts games this week and Lukie is going to want to watch Mary)...

Lukie asked if he could root for "Syd the Kid" and I said sure, just never call her that...Syd's cool, but won't take that...

Syd came up and talked to me before the game, but Lukie/Lex were getting concessions...they were bummed they didn't get to meet her, but I bet there will be more opportunities in the future...

FYI - this hockey team is also good enough to make a run at the state tournament...we'll see in March...I know the kids (and even Kieran) will enjoy watching the run...

Gooseberry Falls....

A couple of weeks ago, as we left Jay Cooke State Park, Luke suggested we go to Gooseberry Falls.  So instead of turning south, we detoured over an hour out of our way to the north...but you can't go wrong with visiting Gooseberry...

Even Lukie said "Gooseberry and Jay Cooke are my two favorite parks."....

And frozen (it might not be frozen now) waterfalls are cool...

The best part of the trip to Gooseberry for me was when one of the kids (I won't say who) said "you always take us to cool places and have fun with us, mom only started this summer..."

Frozen waterfalls are cool...

Of course they 'needed' to visit the cave near the upper falls...

The upper falls frozen was just as cool...

After spending an hour at the falls, Lukie/Lex wanted to go to the 'tadpole' place, which they both knew tadpoles wouldn't be there...

It was fun listening to them describe each pool in their terms and seeing how some of them hadn't frozen to the bottom yet...

Some of the pools you could pull chunks of ice out with strange features that match the bedrock below...

The picnic lava flow (tadpole place) is always a fun place to visit...

I've also got this picture from a multitude of different seasons or weather, but it's always cool...

What do you do after spending a few hours running around Gooseberry Falls?  You take a break...

Thanksgiving Movie....

Late Thanksgiving night, Lukie/Lex and I went to the movies.  We saw the Justice League and it was the second time each of us had seen it...

After getting tickets, Lex saw the standing picture of Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) and just needed a picture...remember, she was Wonder Woman for Halloween after we had seen the movie over the summer...

She even mimicked Wonder Woman's crossing of the arms when in battle...

Lukie jumped into the picture right at the end...I said he just wanted to to be in a picture with a cute girl like his sister...he said "no, I want to be in a picture with Wonder Woman!"

Jay Cooke State Park

So a two weeks ago, I asked Lukie what he wanted to do that coming weekend.  He said he wanted to stay at a camper cabin at a state park.  Being short notice, I figured we were in for a bit of a drive to who knows where, if any were open...

We got lucky and there was one open at Jay Cooke State Park for that Saturday and it turns out that it was the only camper cabin we've ever stayed at...

We got there early afternoon with a beautiful blue sky...

With a little snow and ice, the swinging bridge was looking good...

Luke and Lex were loving life...

And Luke wanted selfies...

It's cool to be that close to the St. Louis River...

One more selfie...

Then we could checkin to the cabin...

Yeah, we've been there before...

Before dinner, we did a bit of hiking around...

And apparently a lot of deer move into the park as the summer campers leave, we saw at least 15 deer in a day...

Cooking over a fire was tough...all the wood had frost on it and we had to 'defrost' the wood before putting it on the fire...

But we eventually ate and had fun outside until around 9:30 pm or so...

Early the next morning it was time for another hike...

And we had to go see the swinging bridge and area around the river...

Lukie wanted to walk close to the river...just after the picture was taken he slipped on the ice and fell...too bad the camera missed that...

It is pretty in the winter (or summer) with the conifers and bridge...

Of course we had to get a picture with the sign...